This disclosure relates generally to the field of computer systems. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, it relates to a technique for improving configuration management systems.
In a large Information Technology (IT) environment with a wide variety of systems, configuration management software is typically used to manage complex IT data centers. The management software generally obtains information about the various systems present in the datacenter and initiates changes to configurations of these managed systems.
However, when managing multiple disjoint systems, it becomes difficult to define a coherent security context that spans heterogeneous computer systems in a complex data center. A common model is to deploy intelligence (via Agent software) on the managed systems that enforces access controls on the incoming requests. These models are inherently brittle because: (1) As new access control primitives are added on the managed system, they would need to be incorporated into the Agent software; (2) Sensitive access control information may need to be distributed to the managed systems, which increases the risk of a security compromise; and (3) Agent software often needs to run in the context of a highly privileged user such as “root” on UNIX systems and “SYSTEM” on Windows® systems, thereby exacerbating severities of security exploits. (WINDOWS is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation.)
Thus, it would be beneficial to provide a mechanism that centrally manages connections to managed systems, and provides for stateless agents.